As kids and teens prepare to head back to school, parents might not have protecting their child’s lung health on the top of their to-do lists. But experts say it should be. “A new school year often means a new environment for students and staff, including new asthma triggers, exposure to new viruses, peer pressure to smoke or vape and other stressors that can impact the health of students,” said Harold Wimmer, president and CEO of the American Lung Association (ALA). “Students and staff spend a significant amount of time in school, so it is critical to their well-being and education that they are in the healthiest environment and are making the healthiest choices possible.” To that end, the ALA has created a youth initiative to help schools and caregivers address chronic lung issues like asthma, air quality and tobacco-free policies. The initiative offers information, guides and sample policies that can be implemented in schools to protect students and staff. The group is also working to educate parents, students and school officials in four key areas of lung health: Asthma: There are 6.1 million kids under the age of 18 living with asthma, a leading cause of missed school days. The ALA has in-depth resources for parents, young adults and schools on managing asthma, including a free online course for school personnel who administer asthma…  read on >  read on >

Experts have long suspected it, but a new study confirms that folks who vape and smoke tobacco face higher risks for lung cancer than if they’d done either alone. “From a public health perspective, we have always been concerned about dual-use of both traditional and e-cig products,” said study lead author Marisa Bittoni, an oncology researcher at Ohio State University in Columbus. “This study presents clear evidence showing that vaping in addition to smoking can increase your risk for lung cancer,” said Bittoni, who works at the university’s Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute. Her team tracked rates of both vaping and smoking among nearly 5,000 Columbus-area people diagnosed with lung cancer, and compared them to a group of almost 27,300 people without cancer. The results: Folks who had both smoked and vaped were eight times more likely to be in the lung cancer group than the group that was cancer-free. Moreover, people who both vaped and smoked were four times more likely to go on to develop lung cancer compared to people who had only smoked, Bittoni’s group found. The findings were published recently in the Journal of Oncology Research and Therapy. “Our findings provide the first evidence that smoking in combination with vaping significantly increases the risk of lung cancer compared to smoking alone,” said study co-author Dr.…  read on >  read on >

FRIDAY, Aug 2. 2024Mass shootings and other traumatic events hit community members hard, with those closest to the incident often experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) even years later, new research shows. “Outcomes of mass violence incidents in communities extend beyond direct survivors, including persistent PTSD in many adults” who live in those communities, concluded a team led by Angela Moreland, a professor of psychiatry at of the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. Her team looked at data from a 2020 survey taken of almost 6,000 adults. All had lived in one of six communities hit hard by a mass shooting that occurred between 2015 and 2019: Dayton, Ohio; El Paso, Texas; Parkland, Fla.; Pittsburgh, Pa.; San Bernadino, Calif.; and Virginia Beach, Va. People were asked about their exposure to the event — whether they were actually on the scene or were close to someone who was. They were also asked questions aimed at assessing possible PTSD related to the event, as well as any other past traumatic events they’d experienced and how much social support they felt they were getting. About 1 in 5 of those surveyed said they either personally experienced the shooting event or were close to someone who had. About 1 in every 4 people surveyed did meet the criteria for PTSD experienced over the year prior to the survey, and…  read on >  read on >

Hospitalization for a heart-related emergency can have profound effects on a person’s mental health, a new study finds. People hospitalized for heart attack, stroke or other heart-related illnesses were 83% more likely to be diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder within the following year, according to results published July 31 in the Journal of the American Heart Association. Not only that, but this effect lingered: Up to nearly eight years later, those hospitalized were 24% more likely to be diagnosed with a psychiatric issue, researchers found. “If you or a loved one has been hospitalized for heart disease, be aware that mental health issues may arise during recovery,” said senior researcher Dr. Huan Song, a professor of epidemiology with the West China Biomedical Big Data Center at Sichuan University in Chengdu, China. “It’s important to monitor for signs of anxiety, depression or suicidal thoughts. These mental health challenges are common and treatable,” Song added in a journal news release. For the study, researchers analyzed the mental health history of nearly 64,000 British adults who’d been hospitalized with heart problems or stroke between 1997 and 2020. They were compared against another 128,000 people matched for age, gender and the presence of other serious but non-heart-related illness. Within the first year of hospitalization, the rate of mental health diagnoses among heart patients was nearly twice that of people…  read on >  read on >